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In the last civic elections, Parkdale-High Park provided one of the three wards where Olivia Chow had a plurality of votes (Doug Ford got only 17.5% of the votes in Ward 14, as opposed to Olivia Chow's 46.4%, whereas John Tory had a respectable 33.4%).
Ward 14 has 24.5% of its families counted as low income versus a civic average of 19.4%. The average household income is $48,947 as opposed to a civic average of $69, 125. Only 11.6% of households have an income of $100,000 or over.
Ward 1 has 26.3% of its families counted as low income versus a civic average of 19.4%. The average household income is $53,801 as opposed to a civic average of $69, 125. Only 11.5% of households have an income of $100,000 or over.
In the last civic election, Ward 1 gave Doug Ford 70.2% of the vote, and Olivia Chow had only 10.5%. John Tory had only 15.1%.
This contrast is not restricted to the civic elections, Parkdale-High Park regularly elects "progressive" provincial and Federal members: NDP candidates, or Liberals of the Gerard Kennedy type. Ward 1 elects Liberals, (very occasionally Conservatives) while the NDP polls third. So it's not (say) just a response to transit plans of Chow's or Ford's.
If "progressives" want to look at what happened to Olivia Chow, there may be no better place to start than here.
By broad standards, these ridings are very similar: low incomes, high immigrant populations, with clusters of high-rise apartment blocks. Yet Parkdale conforms to the stereotype of a connection between the Left and the disadvantaged whom it champions, whereas Rexdale rejects the Left out of hand.
I don't know of any really clear answers.
It's not as though there aren't progressive initiatives on an ongoing basis -- involvement by politically oriented community leaders -- in Rexdale as well as in Parkdale.There are some hints not directly related to level of income. In general, support for the Left is strongest closest to "downtown", regardless of income. (It is also highest where education is highest (so there is a little enclave of Chow voters up at York University), but that is less obviously related to support by the poor.) In addition, the less "urban" the built-up shape of an area is the more likely it is that it will be conservative/populist. (The form of Rexdale -- high density towers in a sea of low-density homes or non-residentially zoned areas is a stark contrast to the medium-density mixed-use neighborhoods of the downtown and Parkdale.)
I would suggest that there are two factors: one related to the areas' social networks, and one to the curent nature of the Left.
Parkdale is a fairly diverse grouping of people as far as origins and formation goes. Although there certainly are some ethnic "communities" associated with the area -- the Tibetans being one, and recently the Roma -- the impression one gets of it is of a matrix provided by "general" institutions / meeting places of relatively long standing bringing together people of different origins. Also, it's a relatively "mixed" area, with an old built form mixing commercial and residential (which encourages a mixing in itself).
Rexdale is notoriously a new-built, zoned area where many of the residents belong to ethnically / culturally defined "communities".
The elements that cut across the Parkdale social fabric are historically conditioned by the left -- the presence of small social initiatives and an originally working-class matrix. The immigrant communities of Rexdale tend to be more inward-looking and more conservative. (Modulo the issue of poverty, the Italian immigrant community in Trinity-Spadina riding is similarly more conservative and inward-looking than the overall average of the rest of the residents.)
But I'm not sure that this would make a difference if it weren't for the changes which have taken place in the Left.
Back in the days when the working-class communities along Queen in the Parkdale and Trinity-Bellwoods areas were being established, the Left was "aspirational" almost to the point of being millenarian. It held out a goal of transforming society in ways which would benefit the people at the bottom of the heap (the proletariat).
Several things happened to that. First, the promise of Marxism as being a "science" of history collapsed when the "inevitable" conflicts of class struggle were averted by factors such as technical advances which Marx had failed to anticipate. Secondly, the collapse of the soviet bloc left socialism looking rather tarnished (although it would be fair to apply to the practice of Marxism in that bloc Chesterton's dictum re Christianity: "it has not been tried in the balance and found wanting; it has been found difficult and never been tried").
There were, of course, all sorts of non-Marxist forms of socialism, some of which still inform the more social democratic states in Europe. These seem to have been let go in North America. (Socialism used to be an accepted model even on the mild left. "We are all socialists now", said William Harcourt, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Gladstone.)
The Left has found no vision to replace it. It has an agenda -- a mix of "identity politics", third-wave feminism, intersectionality and some economic amelioriations -- which would, if implemented, have a positive effect: but whenever it gets close to power it tends to drop most of its more notable markers and become (in Mackenzie King's phrase) like "Liberals in a hurry".
To put not too fine a point on it, the left has dropped all real pretensions to any form of radicalism; it just wants to tinker a little differently with the system than the mainline mildly conservative classes do.
This wasn't true a generation or two ago. When Dan Heap was buried from Holy Trinity in Toronto (an occasion which Chow attended as an erstwhile protegé of Heap), there was (according to an eyewitness I know) a lot of singing of old-time SCM/Wobbly/Movement songs afterwards. Those songs all have one theme: the Left of Heap's day really looked forward to transforming society. This is not so much the theme of the Left any more.
Take two sample positions, both of which have significant theoretical and practical support from experiments or actual implementations elsewhere in the West: free tuition and a guaranteed annual income.
1) In the 19th Century the government committed to providing funding for universal education to the end of High School (although many people never got past Grade 8). In Ontario, they even threw in the first year of University for free from 1921 until after my day as "Grade 13" (this was, not coincidentally, introduced by the socialist UFO government of my distant cousin Ernest Drury). However, it is clear that at the present time, the credential value of the old Secondary School Graduation Diploma approximates that of a B.A. / B.Sc. far more closely than it does the SSGD of today; and the participation rate in universities is similar to that for high school at that time. From a social utility point of view, it would make eminent sense to provide a general arts and science university education for free (or a nominal cost) as many European countries do.
The NDP's Position: freeze existing tuition rates.
2) The idea of replacing a patchwork of social support mechanisms with a guaranteed annual income (usually implemented by "reverse income tax") has been around for some time. Studies and actual experiments (at least one of which took place in Canada) have shown that it is more cost-effective (because of the low administration costs) and more effective at achieving its end than the welfare / EI / minimum wage / other programmes model currently in place. It is currently supported by a PC ex-Senator (Hugh Segal), and was supported by Milton Friedman (of all people) at one time (because of its efficiency). It is not a wild-eyed policy.
The NDP's position: fiddle with HST rebates, raise the minimum wage by a few dollars (a half-hearted position, by some accounts).
These are not radical positions: no nationalizations or expropriations are involved. Both would provide widespread benefits (including to the middle classes at certain times of life) and would probably "pay for themselves" in the medium to long term (the free tuition stands a good chance of improving the quality of the workforce as well as eliminating costs associated with the funding and enforcement of student loan programmes).
Modern "progressivism", at least as reflected at the party level, is not nearly as starkly distinct from its competing political views as it used to be, and, like modern moderate liberalism and moderate conservatism, is a reflection of aspects of the educated middle class. Unlike the old Left, its skew is almost wholly towards the better-educated classes (the old Left had a hefty mix of blue-collar unionists).
There is nothing in that mix to attract the modern underclasses as adherents of the Left. They are in a poor position to make inroads in the poor outer suburbs of the city.
Ward 14 has 24.5% of its families counted as low income versus a civic average of 19.4%. The average household income is $48,947 as opposed to a civic average of $69, 125. Only 11.6% of households have an income of $100,000 or over.
Ward 1 has 26.3% of its families counted as low income versus a civic average of 19.4%. The average household income is $53,801 as opposed to a civic average of $69, 125. Only 11.5% of households have an income of $100,000 or over.
In the last civic election, Ward 1 gave Doug Ford 70.2% of the vote, and Olivia Chow had only 10.5%. John Tory had only 15.1%.
This contrast is not restricted to the civic elections, Parkdale-High Park regularly elects "progressive" provincial and Federal members: NDP candidates, or Liberals of the Gerard Kennedy type. Ward 1 elects Liberals, (very occasionally Conservatives) while the NDP polls third. So it's not (say) just a response to transit plans of Chow's or Ford's.
If "progressives" want to look at what happened to Olivia Chow, there may be no better place to start than here.
By broad standards, these ridings are very similar: low incomes, high immigrant populations, with clusters of high-rise apartment blocks. Yet Parkdale conforms to the stereotype of a connection between the Left and the disadvantaged whom it champions, whereas Rexdale rejects the Left out of hand.
I don't know of any really clear answers.
It's not as though there aren't progressive initiatives on an ongoing basis -- involvement by politically oriented community leaders -- in Rexdale as well as in Parkdale.There are some hints not directly related to level of income. In general, support for the Left is strongest closest to "downtown", regardless of income. (It is also highest where education is highest (so there is a little enclave of Chow voters up at York University), but that is less obviously related to support by the poor.) In addition, the less "urban" the built-up shape of an area is the more likely it is that it will be conservative/populist. (The form of Rexdale -- high density towers in a sea of low-density homes or non-residentially zoned areas is a stark contrast to the medium-density mixed-use neighborhoods of the downtown and Parkdale.)
I would suggest that there are two factors: one related to the areas' social networks, and one to the curent nature of the Left.
Parkdale is a fairly diverse grouping of people as far as origins and formation goes. Although there certainly are some ethnic "communities" associated with the area -- the Tibetans being one, and recently the Roma -- the impression one gets of it is of a matrix provided by "general" institutions / meeting places of relatively long standing bringing together people of different origins. Also, it's a relatively "mixed" area, with an old built form mixing commercial and residential (which encourages a mixing in itself).
Rexdale is notoriously a new-built, zoned area where many of the residents belong to ethnically / culturally defined "communities".
The elements that cut across the Parkdale social fabric are historically conditioned by the left -- the presence of small social initiatives and an originally working-class matrix. The immigrant communities of Rexdale tend to be more inward-looking and more conservative. (Modulo the issue of poverty, the Italian immigrant community in Trinity-Spadina riding is similarly more conservative and inward-looking than the overall average of the rest of the residents.)
But I'm not sure that this would make a difference if it weren't for the changes which have taken place in the Left.
Back in the days when the working-class communities along Queen in the Parkdale and Trinity-Bellwoods areas were being established, the Left was "aspirational" almost to the point of being millenarian. It held out a goal of transforming society in ways which would benefit the people at the bottom of the heap (the proletariat).
Several things happened to that. First, the promise of Marxism as being a "science" of history collapsed when the "inevitable" conflicts of class struggle were averted by factors such as technical advances which Marx had failed to anticipate. Secondly, the collapse of the soviet bloc left socialism looking rather tarnished (although it would be fair to apply to the practice of Marxism in that bloc Chesterton's dictum re Christianity: "it has not been tried in the balance and found wanting; it has been found difficult and never been tried").
There were, of course, all sorts of non-Marxist forms of socialism, some of which still inform the more social democratic states in Europe. These seem to have been let go in North America. (Socialism used to be an accepted model even on the mild left. "We are all socialists now", said William Harcourt, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Gladstone.)
The Left has found no vision to replace it. It has an agenda -- a mix of "identity politics", third-wave feminism, intersectionality and some economic amelioriations -- which would, if implemented, have a positive effect: but whenever it gets close to power it tends to drop most of its more notable markers and become (in Mackenzie King's phrase) like "Liberals in a hurry".
To put not too fine a point on it, the left has dropped all real pretensions to any form of radicalism; it just wants to tinker a little differently with the system than the mainline mildly conservative classes do.
This wasn't true a generation or two ago. When Dan Heap was buried from Holy Trinity in Toronto (an occasion which Chow attended as an erstwhile protegé of Heap), there was (according to an eyewitness I know) a lot of singing of old-time SCM/Wobbly/Movement songs afterwards. Those songs all have one theme: the Left of Heap's day really looked forward to transforming society. This is not so much the theme of the Left any more.
Take two sample positions, both of which have significant theoretical and practical support from experiments or actual implementations elsewhere in the West: free tuition and a guaranteed annual income.
1) In the 19th Century the government committed to providing funding for universal education to the end of High School (although many people never got past Grade 8). In Ontario, they even threw in the first year of University for free from 1921 until after my day as "Grade 13" (this was, not coincidentally, introduced by the socialist UFO government of my distant cousin Ernest Drury). However, it is clear that at the present time, the credential value of the old Secondary School Graduation Diploma approximates that of a B.A. / B.Sc. far more closely than it does the SSGD of today; and the participation rate in universities is similar to that for high school at that time. From a social utility point of view, it would make eminent sense to provide a general arts and science university education for free (or a nominal cost) as many European countries do.
The NDP's Position: freeze existing tuition rates.
2) The idea of replacing a patchwork of social support mechanisms with a guaranteed annual income (usually implemented by "reverse income tax") has been around for some time. Studies and actual experiments (at least one of which took place in Canada) have shown that it is more cost-effective (because of the low administration costs) and more effective at achieving its end than the welfare / EI / minimum wage / other programmes model currently in place. It is currently supported by a PC ex-Senator (Hugh Segal), and was supported by Milton Friedman (of all people) at one time (because of its efficiency). It is not a wild-eyed policy.
The NDP's position: fiddle with HST rebates, raise the minimum wage by a few dollars (a half-hearted position, by some accounts).
These are not radical positions: no nationalizations or expropriations are involved. Both would provide widespread benefits (including to the middle classes at certain times of life) and would probably "pay for themselves" in the medium to long term (the free tuition stands a good chance of improving the quality of the workforce as well as eliminating costs associated with the funding and enforcement of student loan programmes).
Modern "progressivism", at least as reflected at the party level, is not nearly as starkly distinct from its competing political views as it used to be, and, like modern moderate liberalism and moderate conservatism, is a reflection of aspects of the educated middle class. Unlike the old Left, its skew is almost wholly towards the better-educated classes (the old Left had a hefty mix of blue-collar unionists).
There is nothing in that mix to attract the modern underclasses as adherents of the Left. They are in a poor position to make inroads in the poor outer suburbs of the city.
